My Vote For President

Obama seems primarily an honest man. Hopefully that’s an act. Politicians and brokers of power can’t be honest. (Just as the presence of just one aggressive party in any given group will transform the group’s orientation toward aggression. Restate: over time, the primary protocol employed will be aggressive. And actually, politics seems to stem from the strategy of aggression.)

McCain mostly reminds me of my grandfather. He was a veteran of Pearl Harbor. McCain is being fed his lines and probably believes in the ones he can understand; the pursuit of power is the thing, which may be the definition of the Republican Party. (That’s the $440,000 one, in case you missed the news. [AIG])

And campaigns have to do with eye-candy. The electorate does the actual electing, in any case the vote counters are at least suspect (maybe you have to be otherwise unemployable–like having completed parole–in order to qualify for the job) human or machine…and the promises made by anyone don’t have anything to do with what occurs or for matter what they intend. Nor does what they intend have a lot to do with well, what they do, because that darn thing “reality” keeps getting in the way. Or so they are advised by various agencies. Then, of course, there’s the intelligence community which since the days of Richard Nixon says things to the president’s aide in a voice so disguised it can’t be understood, the aide rushes over and tells him (or her) that “They said it’s important”, she says “Okay”, the aide rushes back over and says (in as muffled a voice as possible) “It’s like okay” and then the Shadow melts away. Or something like that.

And bear in mind that if you have someone with no experience trying to run a country you’d better damned well hope they can’t do much. And that’s what democracy guarantees. Or something like that.